Honda Point Disaster
On the evening of September 8, 1923, the largest loss of US warships in peacetime occurred at Honda Point, California, when nine destroyers of DesRon11 ran aground at high speed. Two of the vessels, Farragut and Somers, were able to extract themselves, but the other seven, Delphy, S.P. Lee, Young, Woodbury, Nicholas, Fuller, and Chauncey, were lost. Amazingly, only twenty-three sailors perished in this disaster.
All nine captains and their navigators were relieved of duty and courtmartialed.
OK, now that looks like sort of a bad day for somebody. I learned in OOD school you can get so fixated on formation steaming that you forget there’s a real ocean out there. With lumps in it.
BUMP for later read
The Capt in charge of the squardon of DDs was BEACH, I served on the USS TRITON with his son in the erly 1960s. It was blindly following the lead ship that did them in.